On August 10, 2021 Nora Bateson tweeted, “Stage theory... Is BS. Always was. And it is colonial as hell. Sorry, but that has got to go.” That tweet triggered a very necessary and mostly civil discussion on what some call the liminal web. Significantly, there were containers that were able to hold space for those discussions without fracturing. 

On January 17, 2022 The Stoa premiered an animated short film entitled An Initiation to Game B followed by a Game B Dialogos w/ Jim Rutt, Jordan Hall, Tyson Yunkaporta, and Daniel Schmachtenberger, "a dialogos about Game B and the nature of art." There has been a reaction. Some of the response was captured by The Stoa in a session entitled Game B: A Dark Renaissance Response w/ Alexander Bard, Cadell Last, Owen Cox, and Raven Connolly. Some of the reaction was expressed in published articles - Game A/B by Cadell Last and Notes on “Game B: A Dark Renaissance Response w/ Alexander Bard, Cadell Last, Owen Cox, and Raven Connolly” by O.G. Rose. Another video capturing a response is Commentary on 'An Invitation to Game B' (Livestream) by Davood Gozli.

This is a lot of material to chew on and digest, which is what I am trying to do. And as is often the case, I am now writing as an aid in my process of wrestling with new ideas. I expect that there will be considerably more discussion of the issues raised and I consider that to be necessary, difficult and good. These developments have created an opportunity for me to clarify some of my own thinking on some of the issues raised. I will share this article with the Emergent Commons community where I am an active member.

All of the above material has a very civil tone. That is important to me and I want to proceed in harmony with that spirit. Once again, it is my expectation that there are containers that are able to hold space for conflicting views and Emergent Commons is one such place.

All of the following quotes are from the article by O.G. Rose.

“The Dark Renaissance is a broader potential artistic, philosophical and religious movement which seeks to reveal, affirm, confront, transform the more disturbing aspects of the human condition as the only way to organize society truthfully.”

“Game A is the collective game that the world is playing, that will come to an end, if we continue to play it, we will self-terminate as a species, Game B is a new game, that we don’t know what it looks like, but their is a glimpse or a sense of what it could be.”

I think the Dark Renaissance thinkers have much to contribute but I reject the idea that there is only one way to organize society truthfully. And I am skeptical of there being a Dark Renaissance movement. However, nothing in the Game B definition offered by Peter Limberg makes me uncomfortable.

The first is that — and as I would like to make clear is my main point — that the very logical structure of “Game A versus Game B” is itself problematic as a starting point. This sets up thinking for an ideological trap. 

Two and a half years into my Game B journey, this is the first time I have encountered the idea of “Game A versus Game B”. The use of the word versus implies something that I do not see. To succeed Game B needs to emerge from and transcend Game A. Game B needs to "steal the culture." Consequently, the Dark Renaissance thinkers are pointing to a problem that may exist mostly in their own minds. 

1. Raven brilliantly notes that Game B is missing conflict in either the form of violence or sex, which means it is missing plot.

I very much agree with this point. I have been troubled for some time by what feels like a sanitized view of human nature in the Game B community. We are biological animals that are conditioned by evolution to survive and reproduce. And there is a biological aspect to male violence. I don’t think I have seen any discussion in our community about the connection between testosterone and violence and that is an unhealthy omission. 

3. To emphasize: a system which can only work by telling humans to change their drives and nature will fail.

But now I disagree. While we are animals, we are unique animals which mysteriously have developed a small bit of free will. We can and we must override our animal instincts.

6. If conflict is creative, can Game B create?

Yes.

8. The point Cadell made that civilization arose in response to nature for a reason cannot be overstressed. Personally, I can’t help but think that if hunting and gathering was so great, people would have kept hunting and gathering…

And now I again agree. I have been troubled by the glamorization of our hunter gatherer ancestors by some people. There are some in the return to nature crowd who see only the good and are in denial of the bad. Yes, we can say that, in some sense, nature is sacred. It is also brutal.

9. Vegetarianism is a sign that totalitarianism is nigh because there is a refusal to face pathos — A nice and ironic point from Alexander Bard.

And I agree. Over the years, my wife and I have significantly reduced our red meat consumption. I understand the benefits of vegetarianism. But I have no intention of reducing my red meat consumption to zero. However, I do not understand why this point is being raised. I have seen no evidence that vegetarians in the Game B community seek to impose their choices on others.

11. “Where is human sacrifice in Game B?” — Great question from Owen.

This is not a great question. It is not difficult to see harmless outlets for any desire for human sacrifice. However, I am critical of those who glamorize ancient, indigenous cultures. I live in Mexico which was once home to the Mayans and the Aztecs, who both practiced human sacrifice. This is not an issue to be ignored.

14. Will Game B corroborate with Game A or compete? If corroborate, how will Game B not “enable” Game A? If Game B must compete, how will Game B not be Game A? (How will Game B overcome Game A if it doesn’t ultimately beat it?)

On this point, I get the sense that the Dark Renaissance thinkers do not deeply understand Game B strategy. Game B will neither corroborate nor compete with Game A. And to be fair, Game B readily acknowledges that it does not have answers to these good questions, not yet.

17. Please do not think I am a strong supporter of Capitalism: my concern is that I am not convinced we need Game B versus just fix Game A (a view which could be seen as more Keynesian). For example, whether than try to create a Game B (which could “unbound pathos” in horrible ways), we might first try to…

We now come to a very important point. Six examples are given of ways to fix Game A. That is a strategy that others, such as Brent Cooper, seem to favor. But I have become convinced that Game A cannot be fixed. For many years I favored incremental progress in Game A, but no more.  At a strategic level, I am unconvinced by the path forward presented by the Dark Renaissance thinkers. There are many people doing much good to make Game A better. I truly wish them well. But, in my opinion, they do not belong in the Game B movement.

21. The question on if marriage arises primarily from a desire to “sexually own” someone, or if it arises in response to the reality of childrearing, the biological fact that “your sperm and my egg” gave rise to this child (and thus we are responsible for the child and by extension have responsibilities to one another), is utterly critical.

Yes, this is a critical issue, but I personally have little to offer in this area.

22. I’m curious why Game B chose “game” versus “story” or “community” as a metaphor — is it a Wittgenstein allusion

I love this point because I too am curious. I think I somewhat understand the choice and I like the playfulness suggested by the word game. But personally I would much prefer using the word stories. Some time ago I concluded that, in a sense, it is all stories all the way down. I naturally think in terms of narratives and I am on the lookout for the next grand narrative powerful enough to unite us all. (Perhaps there has been an edit to the article as I no longer see the line I quoted.)

23. The problem of society is the question of how to manage people with different ideologies so that they don’t kill one another. Considering this, will Game B only work if everyone believes in Game B?

Again, the problem identified is real but the question again suggests to me that the Dark Renaissance thinkers have a poor understanding of Game B, which is not something to believe in, not an ideology.  And the new grand narrative which I hope emerges will not be something to believe in. It will be a powerful narrative with everyone also understanding it as just another story, that looking for the one true narrative is not the way forward. We need to be believers in stories, but not True Believers in THE TRUE STORY.

We often discuss “the problem of systems,” but not “the problem of people,” because we seem to think that “the right system” will fix people. 

I do not see much evidence of a narrow focus on systems thinking in the Game B community. What I see is an understanding that better systems and better people need to co-evolve. And I will also note that I already see many people in their twenties and thirties who are miles ahead of where I, a Baby Boomer, was at their age.

We need “nonrationality, rationality, and irrationality” — all three — to avoid ending up in “suboptimal results.” Unfortunately, if only a minority of people will incorporate “nonrationality” into their thinking, then only a minority can participate in Absolute Communities; 

I very much agree and I think this idea is well understood by many Game B thinkers.

It’s another topic, elaborated on in Book Three of The True Isn’t the Rational, but all systems must ultimately prove incomplete. This alludes to the work of Kurt Gödel, but basically it means that “no map can be its territory,” and it is precisely at the point where “the map” is unveiled not to be “the territory” that we find the human standing with all his/her pathos, logos, and mythos. The human subject is why all systems are ultimately incomplete, which means what happens to the system is ultimately up to the human (“a flip moment”). 

Again I agree, but I already knew this. However, I would like to see considerably more emphasis on the incompleteness of knowledge, especially at an individual level but also in aggregate. And I would like to add that it is Game B pioneer Jim Rutt who talks about the hero’s answer being I DO NOT KNOW.

The only way to make death good is to accept it.

And again I agree but I already knew this too. And this insight is not unique to the Dark Renaissance or Game B. There are a growing number of people in the Game A world who have a deep understanding of this and I am fortunate to personally know several such people.

There is one criticism of Game B that I would like to add. As much as I respect the work of Jim Rutt, it is my sense that he is capturing Game B as a brand, no doubt unintentionally. And Game B no longer is an adequate term to capture what is emerging. For a couple of years I thought of myself as part of the Game B movement. But in the last few months that stopped feeling right.

At just the right time along came Joe Lightfoot and his article The Liminal Web: Mapping An Emergent Subculture Of Sensemakers, Meta-Theorists & Systems Poets.

A Liminal Movement - And finally, while I'm dreaming, over time I’d like to see a broader movement coalesce around Liminal ideals and start to influence the political landscape by applying the kinds of ideas found in the work of Indra Adnan and Hanzi Frienacht. And if I was to get really wild for a moment I could even one day envisage the formation of a kind of Solarpunk inspired, blockchain based progressive equivalent of a Liminal Network State, but such ideas are probably best left for when I finally get around to writing a Solar Punk Science Fiction novel. 

I now see myself as part of a Liminal Movement rather than part of the Game B movement. In this light, the Dark Renaissance critic of Game B, while very interesting, is unimportant to me. We are part of something much bigger that is now taking shape.

I would now like to express my gratitude to Peter Limberg, steward of The Stoa, for hosting the Dark Renaissance thinkers. We need good critics and these four are very good and well worth listening to. I do not accept all of what they say and I do not even understand everything they say. But I hope to see more sessions like this on The Stoa. I would particularly like to see a group of artists on The Stoa critic An Initiation to Game B.

Where are the artists? They are largely conspicuous by their absence in the Game B movement but are very much needed in the Liminal Movement. There are some, such as The Dark Mountain community, who know about Game B, but seem content to ignore it. I know there are some who have the soul of an artist amongst the Emergent Commons membership and I would love to hear their perspectives.

One of the many areas that Game A gets very wrong is relationships between men and women. The culture war between tribes captured by extremists is making progress almost impossible. The liminal movement needs to get this right and good work is being done. But I have a personal concern about the macho male vibe I sometimes see in the liminal space. I am not at all opposed to the healthy expression of true masculinity. But I recognized years ago that I am not a macho male, and I have written about My Masculinity. 

Finally, there is an elite at the top of the Liminal Movement and I am very impressed by almost all of them. They are very intelligent and very productive, doing work far beyond anything I would be capable of. And I am intimidated by them. However, I see a need for a louder collective voice from more average and ordinary people like myself. In Game A there is a huge disconnect between the elite and the rest. That must not happen in the liminal movement, but it is not work for the elite to do.